The windows through which we see wonderful things

Monthly Archives: October 2013

This post is pretty much entirely brought to you by the song “Winifred” by Seth Boyer. Basically, I really got into this song, and as a result this artist. Looking up his stuff online, I learned that this song was, in fact, based on the events of Joss Whedon’s Angel season 5. I didn’t pick up on that at all, though the title reminded me of the character. Which reminded me of what I thought of the show. Which brings us here, to this post. I can’t really take us into the future, at least not in an introductory paragraph… I can, apparently, go from Joss Whedon to a thesis arguing that “realism” is not a method but a goal, and that fantasy does not pursue that goal defined in that way.

It is nearly here. Halloween has come upon us like some wet, cold creature rubbing its fur against our legs while we scratch its gills and wonder which is real. They’re both real, and your pants are wet now. Let’s declare this a somewhat sacred tradition, this upcoming post. I wrote about Lovecraft last year, and I’ll probably write about him next year. So here you are, the 2013 WW post on Lovecraft. I’m sure you’re excited. It’s on At the Mountains of Madness.

It’s still Halloween season, yo! While we all eagerly await the latest Scream Fortress update, I thought I could tell you about something you could be doing in the interim: listening to a podcast. Yes, probably you already know what I’m talking about — Welcome to Night Vale. So this isn’t really a recommendation. My recommendation is, why aren’t you already listening? Instead, I want to talk about its setting methods for my third 2013 Halloween post.

In this, my second Halloween post of 2013, I wanted to talk some about RPGs — not video game RPGs, not this time, but pen and paper RPGs. Specifically, I wanted to talk about how horror works in one of these games. It’s not as straightforward as it seems, really.

Ah, it’s Halloween time. The time of imagination, where everyone can be a witch or a wizard or a demon or a prostitute. The way I try to live it up every day. So as with last year, I’ll try to focus on Halloween-y topics for the month of October, with the hopes we can all get into and keep the mood of the best holiday in mind, even if we’re too old to extort candy from our neighbors. This week I’ll discuss my deep abiding problems with Scott Snyder’s depiction of the Joker. Because, you know, he was supposed to be scary.